EVANSVILLE, Ind. — Over the years, Evansville banker Gary Roan has gathered a trove of information about the violent event that altered the life of his father, Sanford Roan.

The year was 1940, and 26-year-old Sanford Roan had just earned his business degree from North Carolina AT&T. With diploma in hand and one of the highest civil service exam scores in the state of Ohio, he returned to his hometown of Columbus to become the first African American admitted into the Ohio Highway Patrol cadet school.

Gary Roan, who moved to Evansville in 2011 to run Old National Bank’s Community Development Banking department, believes his father viewed the Highway Patrol as a stepping stone to a career in law.

“I think he wanted to be an attorney, and he looked at the Highway Patrol as a step in that direction,” Roan said. “Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.”

Newspaper article that shows Sanford Roan when was accepted to the Ohio State Patrol.(Photo: Provided)

Perhaps the most detailed account of the incident that derailed Sanford Roan’s plans is preserved in the Sept. 28, 1940, edition of the Columbus Advocate. In the newspaper article, Sanford explained that the Highway Patrol cadets often sparred with one another in three-minute bouts as part of their afternoon self-defense training.

On the afternoon in question, he made his way to the sparring area and found five men lined up to fight him who, according to the article, “…evidently received instructions to see that I was discouraged enough to resign from the training course and the school.”

Sanford Roan ended up in an area hospital, where seven stitches were required to close a facial laceration. Discouraged by the altercation and weeks of hazing (which included having snakes placed in his bed), he resigned from the school.

That’s when then-Ohio governor John Bricker – who was up for re-election in November – stepped in and publicly promised an investigation.

“Basically, the governor used my father as a political pawn to secure the black vote,” said Gary Roan. “He was able to talk him into coming back to the cadet school by promising a full investigation and also by assuring him he’d be appointed to the Highway Patrol once the election was over.”

Upon his return, some of Sanford Roan’s fellow cadets privately let him know they had no choice but to treat him poorly. They were taking orders from Colonel Lynn Black, who had run the cadet school since its formation in 1933.

“The boys, when they would talk to me, would make sure no one else was around to see them,” Sanford Roan wrote in a December 1940 letter to President Franklin Roosevelt about his cadet school experiences. “Generally, they expressed their sympathy at the conditions, but said there was nothing they could do.”

Unfortunately, by the time Sanford Roan penned his hand-written letter to FDR, he had resigned from the program for good. In November, Bricker had won re-election handily, and with his victory, the full investigation he promised faded as quickly as his pledge to appoint Sanford Roan to the Highway Patrol.

For Sanford Roan, a former star athlete who had been voted the most popular student at his mostly-white high school, being rejected solely because of his race was a jarring experience. In his heartfelt letter to FDR, which asked the president to intervene and help him find the employment opportunity he’d been promised, he stated that he had been “misled” by his high school experience.

A letter Sanford Roan wrote to President Franklin D Roosevelt on December 19, 1940.(Photo: Provided)

“With this experience as a background, I expected to break the ice after the boys became accustomed to seeing me around,” he wrote. “I was soon to become very disappointed – not by the boys, but by someone who seemed to be waving the hand of prejudice around.”

A month later Sanford Roan was disappointed yet again when he received a letter from U.S. Attorney General Wendell Barge stating that his issues were “within the exclusive jurisdiction of the State of Ohio.” The federal government would not intervene on his behalf.

At that point, Gary Roan says his father retreated. If he couldn’t break through the color barrier and carve out a career in the then-predominantly white world of Ohio politics and government, he would make it a different way.

Ultimately, the life Sanford Roan settled into – and for – was that of a successful business owner on Columbus, Ohio's “Chitlin Circuit,” which was the nickname for a string of African American restaurants and clubs that provided a welcoming audience for black performers of the time.

Sanford Roan(Photo: Provided)

In those days, being a club or bar owner typically meant opportunities for additional, alternative income streams, and Sanford Roan was no stranger to these. From participating in the “numbers game” (a popular, yet illicit, street-level lottery) to general gambling and loansharking, Gary Roan said his father did what he needed to amass the wealth necessary to ensure his children got the best private school education.

The fact that Sanford Roan was shot to death in 1965, following an altercation in one of his own establishments, is a tragedy. But what’s more tragic for those who knew and loved him is that he never got the opportunity to put his considerable intelligence and charisma to use as a trial attorney, a politician or a corporate executive.

“I really think he grew to hate his life and was angry at what he had to endure to be financially successful,” said Gary Roan.

His older sister (and only sibling) Kay, a 68-year-old retired social worker living in Columbus, Ohio, agrees with this assessment.

“I think our father was depressed,” she said. “And I think he was frustrated because he knew how brilliant he was.

“He was a complicated man.”

This is the first part in a four-part series by Rick Jillson, a former Courier & Press employee who now works for Old National Bank as corporate communications manager.

Front page of the Call and Post that shows a story regarding the death of Sanford Roan.(Photo: Provided)